BizRules Blog

10,000 baby boomers are retiring today.

10,000 more will retire next Monday. And Tuesday. And so on. That's the way it's going to be for the next 20 years. Key personnel and subject matter experts with 20 to 30 years of experience are going to clear their desk and head down to Florida. As they walk out the door, invaluable corporate knowledge will simply disappear.

Intellectual capital, a vital corporate asset, will melt away unless companies do something to stop the brain drain and to retain critical knowledge.

Visible Knowledge LLC (www.visibleknowledge.com) has a solution:

• An interactive RuleMap™ that models business rules & simulates business logic
• An interactive Expertise Blueprint™ that transforms knowledge into Visible Knowledge™
• A Legacy Interview(sm) 

Visible Knowledge helps companies retain vital corporate knowledge before it melts away. They focus on documenting invaluable critical knowledge from your top domain experts and key personnel, before they retire. It can take companies years and millions of dollars to recover from losing this type of knowledge.

A traditional exit interview is just not enough when you're dealing with subject matter experts or super experts. So Visible Knowledge has developed a Legacy Interview(sm) process that extracts and documents critical knowledge before experts leave or retire. They use a rapid knowledge acquisition process to extract maximum amount of knowledge in a minimum amount of time. Visible Knowledge focuses on capturing critical knowledge.

If Know It All Ken just gave you two weeks notice, and he's the only one who knows how to fix the $5 million widget making machine, Visible Knowledge can help. They can spend a few days with Ken and document the crucial knowledge you need to keep the business running.  

If Super Expert Sally is retiring in a few months, Visible Knowledge can spend a few weeks with her to elicit as much vital and critical knowledge as possible before she leaves.

If your entire Dept of Super Experts is retiring next year, Visible Knowledge can work with your team over the next few months or years to document the critical knowledge you need to retain.

Later, if you need to automate the knowledge that was captured and retained, companies like BIZRULES can help you do that. BIZRULES works with leading knowledge software vendors to design and build knowledge-based and rule-based solutions.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 12:42 PM Filed under A.I., BIZRULES, BRE / BRMS Vendors, Benefits / ROI, Brain Drain, Business Domain / Industry, CEO, CIO, Challenges, Compliance (SOX, etc.), E-Commerce Rules, Energy, Oil & Gas, Expert System, Health & Life Insurance, Healthcare, KM (Knowledge Mgmt), P&C Insurance, Press Release, Pricing & Discount Rules, Retail Rules, Revenue Recognition, SME | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If networks run repeats, then bloggers can too. So this week I'm reprinting a popular article that is getting lots of hits on Google, in a shameless effort to keep that article #1 on Google:

Critical Challenges Facing Business and IT Today, Sep. 8, 2005, BIZRULES Blog

If you enter those words into Google, that article shows up as #1. Here are the stats as of now:

• #1 of about 1,170,000 for critical challenges facing business today
• #1 of about 1,380,000 for critical challenges facing business
• #1 of about 1,450,000 for the critical challenge facing business today
• #4 of about 2,560,000 for challenges facing business today
• #8 of about 9,620,000 for challenges facing business
• #8 of about 10,700,000 for challenges facing businesses

I didn't realize this was such a popular topic. If you'd like to add or suggest other critical challenges to add to the list, please add your comments to that article.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 10:57 PM Filed under #1 Hits (Most Popular Entries), Challenges | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If employees don’t know, don’t understand, or don’t care what the rules are, you have a business rules problem.

If customers get different answers depending on who they talk to, you have a business rules problem.

If salespeople can decide whether to charge the right price or a bogus price, you have a business rules problem.

Best Buy, the nation's largest electronics retailer, has a business rules problem.

It's also dealing with a public relations nightmare, and an investigation by the Connecticut Attorney General's Office.

Pricing rules used by salespeople in Best Buy stores are inconsistent and contrary to Best Buy pricing policies established in the boardroom. “What we've learned very quickly is we have not been clear enough in communicating to our employees the policy, and how to execute it in our stores,” said Dawn Bryant, spokeswoman for Best Buy.

“Success in the world of business depends on understanding the rules,” I said recently during a panel discussion on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

“You need to know the internal rules and policies of your business. You have to comply with the external rules and regulations that govern your business, industry, and function. Your company must ensure that rules are followed. Your company must enforce the rules. Your company must give staff tools to help them follow the rules, make legal decisions, and prevent them from making illegal decisions. Business rule management systems (BRMS) and business rule engines (BRE) help companies comply with rules and regulations like SOX.

If you don’t have a rule engine that automatically prevents employees from breaking the rules and instantly detects and prevents fraud, you’re out of the game. You’ll end up watching your stock go from $30 to $3 during lunch. You lose. You’re out of business.

Smart companies are using business rules to ensure compliance with rules, to enforce rules, to increase agility so they can change faster, to prevent business mistakes, and to reduce IT system development costs by changing rules in days not months.

Business rules technology helps business comply with rules and regulations, helps employees follow the rules, and prevents employees from breaking the rules (either accidentally or on purpose).”

Business rules management is the prescription for business rules problems. Business rules management entails everything from the business rules approach to business rules technology. 

The business rules approach helps companies transform complex policies into easy to understand business rules. What better way is there to clearly describe and communicate policies and business rules to employees?

Business rules technology helps companies execute the right business rules at the right time every time. What better technology is there to automate business rules?

What happened at Best Buy is a great example of what can go wrong when business rules are not designed and engineered properly.

Business rules are like the glue that holds together all the parts of the corporation. Business rules integrate and align all the moving parts of the corporation. With business rules management, Best Buy can ensure that rules and processes used in the stores are aligned with Best Buy pricing policies defined in the boardroom.

Without business rules management to connect the elements of the corporation, the only way to ensure the corporation works as intended is to "hope and pray," as John Zachman likes to say. With weak or wrong business rules, the corporation falls down like a house of cards.

This is why business rules management is vital to the corporation.

Business rules management is not just about documenting business rules, defining who the owners are, and deciding who is authorized to change them. It’s not just about using rule-based languages to speed up system development instead of hard-wiring rules in legacy code. It’s not just about selecting a business rules engine. It’s not just about understanding the company’s strategies, policies and business practices, and then transforming those objectives into rulebooks, descriptive business rule models, IT specifications, and finally into automated systems.

Business rules management is also concerned with architecting and engineering the business rules so they are integrated with the rest of the business. This helps ensure that the implemented business rules that are in actual use, whether automated or manual, align with the governing rules and strategies of the business.

What happened at Best Buy?

At first, I thought the Best Buy pricing problem was complicated and hard to explain. Then I wondered how can business rules help solve this problem? What would BIZRULES do if Best Buy came to us for help?

That’s easy. I like to draw pictures to simplify complex ideas. By removing the complexity, pictures help me make even the most complex concepts easy to understand:

 

(Click to see medium or large slide)

This is an example of three business rules that were apparently in operation at Best Buy when this story broke. Of course, we really don't know the rules were, so this is just a good guess based on published news accounts of what really happened.

Along with a picture of the rules, this slide shows how the rules affect the rest of the company. It also shows how the rules satisfy business rules management objectives, and business rule engineering design objectives:

Rule #1 is a conceptual explanation of the pricing policy to honor the lowest price.

• This rule tells us what management means and what their intentions are.
  

Rule #2 is a logical description of the corporate policy to honor the lowest price:

• This business rule clearly shows alignment to corporate strategy.
  

• This is the high quality rule prescribed by the pricing strategy.
  

• This rule shows integration between online and retail stores.
  

• This rule offers reusability – the same rule can be implemented online and in the store.
  

• This rule shows transparency.
  

• This rule reduces operations costs because it’s easy to follow.
  

• This rule demonstrates regulatory compliance.
  

• This picture is worth a thousand words.
  

• This rule builds Customer Trust Management.
  

• This is a “Best Buy” type of rule.
  

• This rule is easy to approve, assess, test, and certify.
  

• This rule improves governance and controllership.
  

Rule #3 is used (i.e. prescribed) by some salesman to mislead customers into paying higher prices:

• This business rule is clearly not aligned to corporate strategy.
  

• This poor quality rule is operational and being used in stores.
  

• This rule shows discontinuity and inconsistency between online and retail stores.
  

• This store rule cannot be reused online because it lacks transparency.
  

• This rule increases operations costs because it’s hard to explain and justify.
  

• This rule raises questions about regulatory compliance.
  

• You need a thousand words to explain this picture.
  

• This rule destroys customer confidence and trust.
  

• This rule is public relations nightmare.
  

• This rule may be illegal.
  

• This is a “bait & switch” type of rule.
  

• This rule should never have been approved.
  

• This rule raises questions about whether proper rules, processes, and controls are in place.

Now that I understand what the current pricing situation at Best Buy is, it seems pretty straightforward:

• Management intention is Rule #1. This is Best Buy’s pricing policy.
  
• Marketing description is Rule #2. This is what marketing thinks is happening.
  
• Sales prescription is Rule #3. This is what salespeople are actually doing.
  
• IT specification is not applicable in this example because these rules have not been automated. If these rules were automated, an executable specification of the rule (i.e. pseudo code) may need to be developed for the programmer.

These four views of the business rules fit nicely into an Enterprise Rules Architecture.

The next step is to fit these rules into an enterprise architecture framework. I used John Zachman’s influential and compelling Framework for Enterprise Architecture as an example:

(Click to see medium or large slide)

Next, I overlaid Best Buy Rules #1-3 on top of Zachman’s Enterprise Architecture Framework to add more clarity to the Best Buy pricing situation:

 (Click to see medium or large slide)

The pricing problem at Best Buy is that the business rule used by salespeople in the stores contradicts the company’s pricing policy. Clearly Rule #3 is not aligned with Rule #1 or Rule #2.
Business rules confusion is what caused the problem.

Business rules management is the solution.

To get out of this sticky mess, Best Buy needs to:

• establish or improve their business rules management.
  
• prevent salespeople from using Rule #3 immediately
  
• mandate use of Rule #2 immediately.
  
• automate Rule #2 as soon as possible. Why let salespeople decide pricing at all? Let the computer figure out what the lowest price is.
  
• use a business rule engine to automate this rule as quickly as possible. This rule change needs to happen overnight. But changing hard-wired rules in code takes take days or weeks. Often, companies that don’t use rule engines take months to change business rules as simple as these. This is one reason why companies buy rule engines: Changing rules in a rule engine takes minutes.
  
• educate salespeople on the pricing rules. Of course, if Best Buy automated the rules using a rule engine, they wouldn’t need to train as much.
  
• ensure compliance with these rules from now on.

What about the secret website?

Business rules can also help Best Buy get rid of the secret and duplicate website. It's hard enough to maintain and manage prices for thousands of products on one website, let alone two. There are costs associated with maintaining a duplicate site containing 250,000 pages; surely management and shareholders want to reduce redundant costs like these. One way is to use a business rule engine to eliminate the duplicate site and duplicate effort. Why not write a few rules to show different prices (if that really is management’s objective) depending on whether the salesman pulls up the web pages on the Internet or the "secret website" on the Intranet?

How else can business rules management and business rules technology help Best Buy? Please comment and let me know.

Rolando Hernandez

CEO & Chief Rules Architect, BIZRULES

 

Continue reading "Best Buy, Bogus Prices: Confusion about pricing rules reveals need for business rules management" »

Posted by Ask Rolo at 03:34 PM Filed under Architecture, BR 101, BRE / BRMS, BRM (Rule Mgmt), Benefits / ROI, Best Practice, Business Mistakes, CEO, CIO, Challenges, Compliance (SOX, etc.), Decisioning, E-Commerce Rules, Lessons Learned, Pricing & Discount Rules, Retail Rules, Revenue Recognition, Rule Examples | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Understanding and managing business rules is vital to the corporation. It is just as important as managing people, processes, and information.

Nevertheless, business rules are often misunderstood and poorly managed.

Many rules remain unwritten – they are known only to and retained by subject matter experts who sooner or later leave the corporation, causing brain drain. When business rules are written, they are seldom shared and reused throughout the corporation, which increases operating costs. When business rules are automated, they may not be aligned to the business strategies and policies, leading to quality problems.

In order to program business rules, programmers often rely on unclear business rule specifications that are incomplete or incorrect. Then they usually hard-wire the business rules in computer languages that only programmers can understand and change.

Because programmers are not directly involved in the day-to-day operation of the business, they often make assumptions about what the rules are and what management intended. That leads to mistakes or bugs in the programs, which requires further programming and re-programming.

There is a solution.

Some corporations use advanced business rules technology and business rule management methods to take business rules out of IT and bring them back into the business. Now management can finally manage and change their business rules.

Business rules management techniques help management clearly describe and communicate business rules to employees, partners, and customers. Business rule management software helps automate the rules that should be rule-based.

Business rules improve the condition of the corporation. They prevent business mistakes and minimize risk. They solve many critical problems facing business and IT.

Business rules are like the glue that holds together all the parts of the corporation, ensuring that the automated rules align with goals and strategies.

Business rules integrate and align all the moving parts of the corporation into a cohesive enterprise architecture and operating system that works, changes, and lasts.

Business rules give new power to management.

Continue reading "New Power for Management: Business Rules" »

Posted by Ask Rolo at 09:03 PM Filed under BR 101, BRE / BRMS Vendors, BRM (Rule Mgmt), Benefits / ROI, Brain Drain, Business Mistakes, Challenges, SME | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I discovered David Strommer's blog about .Net and Enterprise Architecture recently.

One post caught my eye, Microsoft Rules 1.0 for MS Office, which is about a story called Rules 1.0 that I wrote about Rulebase Management Systems. David's quote is spot on:

"One of the most difficult challenges of any application development effort is accurately capturing the business processes and rules." - - David Strommer

Well said. Thanks David.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 08:32 PM Filed under BRE / BRMS, Challenges, MSFT, Predictions | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a recent issue of Chief Executive* magazine, Editor in Chief J.P. Donlon had this to say about the value of knowledge management:

The single greatest challenge facing CEOs is to raise the productivity of knowledge throughout the enterprise. It is an economic truth that real earnings and real incomes cannot be higher than productivity for any length of time. And knowledge and insight into customer behavior—as opposed to mere information—is the fuel that propels innovativeness.

Wow! I am glad to see an influential business magazine make the point that knowledge, not "mere" information, is the key to productivity, earnings, and incomes. This is exactly what CEOs need to know, and chances are they've read this*. I'm not sure I would say that managing knowledge and raising the productivity of knowledge is the single greatest challenge facing CEOs, but I would certainly say that it is among the top challenges CEOs face. I've been making a similar point for years, that:

Real and lasting competitive edge comes from managing knowledge, not just managing information.

I also like J.P. Donlon's analogy, but I'd like to take it one step further:

If knowledge is the fuel that propels innovativeness, then inference engines and rule engines are the engines that burn the fuel, automate the knowledge, and fire the rules that drive the business.

Rule engines/inference engines are the most effective and most efficient ways to automate knowledge and business rules. Is there any doubt left that every enterprise that wants to compete and innovate and win in today's knowledge-based economy needs a rule engine/inference engine?

* About Chief Executive

Chief Executive is the only magazine written strictly for CEOs and their peers. As the leading source of intelligence for and about CEOs, it provides ideas, strategies and tactics for top executive leaders seeking to build more effective organizations... The readers of Chief Executive include the world's most influential leaders - the CEOs of major corporations around the globe...

Posted by Ask Rolo at 11:10 AM Filed under Benefits / ROI, CEO, Challenges, KM (Knowledge Mgmt) | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Executives used to have secretaries. Now they have Word.

Companies used to have IT/Finance modelers to do "what if" analysis. Now they have Excel.

Newspapers used to have strippers (no not that kind!) that did page layout by hand. Now they have PageMaker.

In the early days of the Web, you needed a Webmaster to create your website. Now you have FrontPage.

What's missing today in the business rules market is a tool that lets business executives write their own rules. Without IT, without programming, and maybe even without automation. Just a tool like Word (for textual rules), Excel (for decision tables), or even Visio (for decision trees) that simply lets me document "logical business rules". And then press File, Save as... "billing rules model 1.0", or "audit rules 1.0", etc. That's what I want to be able to do.

Sure, I'd like to push a button and have that logical rule model artifact go into a business rules repository. Great. If I could push another button and have my logical rule model generate code for whatever Business Rule Engine I'd like to target, now we're talking business rules.

That is the promise of business rules. I want to create a logical rule model, select my technology (i.e. HaleyRules, ILOG, PegaRULES, Versata, Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor, CA AION, Corticon, OpenRules, etc.) and then press GO. I want the tool to transform my logical business rule model into a physical business rule model. Then I want to compile and run.

That sounds farfetched, but I think it's only a year or two away. By the way, this is the same thing that database people do for a living. ERWin anyone? Create a logical database model, select your target physical databse model technology (i.e. SQLServer, DB2, INGRES, etc.), then press GO. This approach works for databases. It is inevitable that this approach will one day soon work for rulebases.

Let's start by calling the BRMS (business rule management system) a RBMS (rulebase management system) instead. Then we should call the business rules repository the rulebase. Business people will find it much easier to understand rulebases if they can compare it to the familiar database analogy.

We'll still need industrial strength rulebases like the ones I mentioned above. But we'll also need a "lite" rulebase software tool for business executives. Think Word, Excel, Visio.... or Access instead of SQLServer...

What if, or when will Microsoft or some other BRE vendor releases Rules 1.0? How about Microsoft Rules 1.0.? Maybe part of Office? What if executives finally have a tool on their desktop to write the rules? A tool that understands IF and THEN and ELSE and MUST and ONLY IF and MUST NOT etc.

I think a lot of business people have been led to believe that that's what business rules will mean to them. And their expectations are that the rule tool will be as easy to use as Excel or Word. I've noticed more and more companies approving business rule projects where the business people have the expectation that the business rules tool is something they can fire up on their PC... as easily as they do Word or Excel.

Business Rule Engine software products are clearly awesome productivity tools for programmers. But only a few of them could be considered tools for executives. We need to think of the BRE as the tool for IT developers and for rule execution, and the logical rule modeling tool I described above as the rule documentation tool for business executives.

I hope there are some companies working on this idea of a logical rules modeling tool that generates code for my BRE tool of choice.

Stay tuned... What do you think? Does Microsoft Rule? Anyone else?

Posted by Ask Rolo at 05:13 PM Filed under Challenges, FIC, Haley, ILOG, MSFT, PEGA, Predictions | | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I was looking through some presentations I gave five years ago and found a list of critical challenges facing Business and IT. These problems could be solved using a business rules approach and BR technology. I'm afraid many companies that haven't climbed aboard the business rules train still face many of these challenges today.

Now that I'm blogging, I thought it would be a good idea to "externalize" this list and make it available on the Web. I'd like to keep adding to this list over time. And of course I welcome your suggestions or additions.

Critical Challenges Facing Business Today

• Compliance with external regulations/laws and with internal policies/rules
• Ability to change business rules instantly
• Managing knowledge
• Managing business rules
• Re-engineering and simplifying business rules and business processes
• Product development time to market
• Application development time to market

Critical Challenges Facing IT Today

• Dealing with rapid business change and increasing complexity
• Time to market
• Increasingly complex business rules
• Changing or adding business logic can break existing logic
• Business rules aren't properly documented
• Business logic duplicated across systems
• Building flexible systems that can support unknown future requirements.
• Many systems today limit what the business can do
• We don’t know the rules in our systems, yet these systems run the business
• Existing rules may actually be inherited system constraints
• Different IT units document business rules differently, if at all
• Business people speak business rules, yet IT speaks data and code
• Managing knowledge, especially business rules

The business rules approach and business rules technology can help solve each of these problems.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 06:15 PM Filed under Challenges | | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Ask Rolo at 01:06 AM Filed under Challenges, Predictions, Quotes | | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A short time ago one of our Knowledge Engineers went to a Business Rule Engine software vendor training course with IT People and Business People from one our clients.

Surprise! The client's business people loved the rule engine software (BRE #1) because they could write rules in an English-like language. The client's IT people didn't like it as much because they could write rules in an English-like language. It had something to do with, uh, you know, hey, if we actually used this thing we wouldn't need some of our IT business analysts because the tool is so good that the Subject Matter Experts / Domain Experts could author the rules themselves without IT Business Analysts... And if we ever figured how to really use this engine, we may not need some of our IT Programmers either... (See: "the usual suspects")

So, the client decided to use another BRE software package (BRE #2) that:

• Required the larger IT infrastructure investment and ongoing IT support that this client was used to

• Didn't have as "English-like" a language. Because it was more like a typical "programming language", it would be eaiser to the IT People to learn

• The rules were written in a "Java-like" language that IT People understood better

BRE #2 tool enabled Business People to write their own rules just like BRE #1. It opened up some of their simpler rules so they could be authored by Business People instead of IT Programmers. The more complex rules will still require IT assistance. The Business People believe they will be able to write most of the rules themselves (without IT) using this powerful tool. The IT People see it diferently - they believe that the most of the rules will require some IT support, or that the Business People will call and ask IT to write the rules for them. Time will tell how this plays out.

Now both the Business and IT are happy. BRE tool vendor #2 is happy. BRE tool vendor #1 is not - They lost this sale because their tool was too good to be true.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 03:18 AM Filed under Analyst, BRE / BRMS Vendors, Benefits / ROI, Challenges, Expert System | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the biggest obstacles we face in the Business Rule Management industry is that rule engine/expert system software tools are "that good".

• Some companies just can't believe all the "claims" that we (the BR software vendors and BR consulting firms) make, so they go away and don't buy. They think our "claims" are "hype".

• Some companies do believe all the claims and immediately see the power and value that Business Rule Engines and Expert Systems can add. Then the IT side realizes that "business people writing rules" really means "IT people don't have to". So all too often some IT People raise technology issues and concerns such as Top 10 Reasons Why We Should Not Manage Business Rules or use Business Rule Engines that slow down or derail the whole effort.

• Some companies that have figured out how to "do rules right" and really leverage BRE/ES technology get so much value out of it that they just don't want to talk about it. Some clients don't want to stake a "claim" - - they prefer to stay under the radar and keep firing away (no pun intended) at their competition. If you had a secret competitive edge, would you tell your competition? (See: "Expert systems didn't really go away. They went undercover.")

So even though there are lots of BRE software vendors and a few visionary niche methodology/consulting vendors that Gartner calls "Satellite Methodology Vendors" like BIZRULES.COM (shameless plug!), one of the challenges we face is that our solutions and technologies are "so good" that clients won't tell, and potential clients won't believe.

For 20 years, people in this industry have been trying to solve this problem. I wish I knew the answer.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 02:55 AM Filed under BRM (Rule Mgmt), Benefits / ROI, Challenges, Expert System | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is a list of what I call "the usual suspects" - - These are the quotes that you will hear many IT People say when someone proposes the idea of using a rule engine instead of hard-coding or hard-wiring rules.

The Proposer sees the rule engine as a way to increase IT productivity, improve time to market, and reduce IT costs.

The "Old IT" People see the rule engine as a threat because it means they won't have to write as much code. Less code to write means less money to make.

The "New IT" People see the rule engine as an opportunity because it means they won't have to write as much code. This will give them more time to do more higher value-added work.

So listen up next time someone suggests using a rule engine in your company: See if you can tell from the response and feedback who gets the "New IT" of the 21st Century, and who is still stuck in the "Old IT" of the 20th Century?

10. "This is different." - - I agree, yes, traditional procedural applications are quite different from declarative rule-based applications

9. "This is not how we build traditional procedural-IT systems around here."

8. "This is not the way we hard-code or "hard-wire" our rules in our systems."

7. "If we use a rule engine, we may not need as many IT business analysts." - - This is a fact. Subject Matter Experts and other Business People may indeed be able to author the rules themselves, without IT Business Analysts

6. "And if we really learn how use this rule engine well, we may not need as many IT Programmers either..." - - This is a fact

7. It's not object oriented." - - This is wrong on multiple levels. First of all, object oriented programming systems evolved from A.I. and expert systems research labs. The earliest inference engines and expert systems were actually among the first (if not the first) computer programs that were truly object oriented. Remember SmallTalk?

6. "The inference engine will be too slow." - - This is wrong. This statement may be made by somebody who has experience working on expert system projects back in 1985. Everything was slow back then. Inferencing is a lot like thinking - It's hard work! Remember, PC's were running at 10 or 20 MHz back then. Inference engines run fine on my 3 GHZ PC in 2005.

5. "It'll never work." - - Some people just don't get it. They cannot deal with change. Lots of very smart people say things like that, and they turn out to be dead wrong. See Famous Quotes

4. "We tried that years ago, but it was too slow." - - See #6

3. "This rule engine adds one more layer for our programs to deal with." - - Technically, you may be right. However, did you stop to consider how many layers of legacy rule code you will be able to get rid of once the way you throw out all the spaghetti-code rules logic and put the rules in a rulebase (aka rule engine) instead? Getting rid of all that "hard-wiring" is probably going to eliminate about 23.5 layers of junk. So, yes, I agree with you on this one: Using the rule engine will add "one more layer". Let's call it the "business logic layer" or the "knowledge layer"

2. "Our rules are too complex for a rule engine." - - Every time I hear this claim, my jaw drops, then I go speechless. After a few seconds, I will explain the fact that the more complex your business rules are, the more you need a rule engine. This is usually the right moment to bring up the RETE algorithm and discuss how it scales and handles more rules without degrading.

1. "We'll just write our own rule engine." - - This is usually the last gasp. Once all the claims above are debated and proven false, this is the one that seems to come up last. At this point, even the IT People realize the way to go is a rule engine. But the first thought is "He's right, we need one... We need a rule engine... We need to build a rule engine." Right.... Let's see. How about a database analogy? What you are saying is that you should build your own rule engine, the same way that you should build your own relational database management system instead of buying Oracle or SQL Server or DB2. OK. I see your point....

Well, if you're that smart, you may be better off writing your own programming language as well. VB is too slow. And Java just adds one more layer.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 02:47 AM Filed under BRE / BRMS, BRM (Rule Mgmt), Challenges, Quotes | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)